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Kahlil Gibran: Historical photographic portraitHistorical photographic portrait

Kahlil Gibran

Life dates: 1883 AD — 1931 AD

Writer and visual artist who worked in Arabic and English. His poetic dialogues invite reflection, while contributor-supplied archive attributions retain their uncertainty.

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Life and writing

Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) was born in Bsharri, in what is now Lebanon, and later worked in the United States. He wrote in Arabic and English and also practised visual art. The Prophet appeared in 1923. These different forms matter when encountering an attributed sentence without its original setting.

In the linked Prophet, people ask a departing speaker about relationships, work and other experiences. “On Marriage” considers closeness alongside space between people; “On Giving” examines motives and receiving. Read a whole exchange before turning its image into a rule. The archive preserves supplied wording and does not authenticate every attributed passage.

Reading this voice

Start with a complete section of The Prophet and notice who speaks and what question prompts the response. The selected supplied passages relate to separation and togetherness, but their contributor wording is preserved without an edition-match claim. All entries under this attribution label remain independently unverified and undated. The profile’s life years do not backfill quotation dates; other Gibran name variants remain separate unresolved labels.

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Quotations and sayings

05c. 1907 AD
Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a win attached to a claw,But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels forever in flight.Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil.Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in the mirror.But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
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11c. 1907 AD
When you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,And what is it to work with love?It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit.Work is love made visible
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12c. 1907 AD
Then a ploughman said , speak to us of work : in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life ,And to love life throught labour is to be intimate with inmost secrets .And what is it to work with love ?it is to weave the colth with threads from your heart , even as if your beloved were to wear that colth .It is to build a house with affection , even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house .It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy , even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit .It is to change all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit .He who works in marble , and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone , is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
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14c. 1907 AD
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.Much of your pain is self-chosen.It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.
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